Wiedmer: Tom Cutinella tragedy shows head hits still haunting football

Shoreham Wading River football players gather at a makeshift memorial for Tom Cutinella on the high school's field on Oct. 2, 2014, in Shoreham, N.Y. Cutinella died the day before at the age of 16 from a collision in a game against John Glenn High School.
Shoreham Wading River football players gather at a makeshift memorial for Tom Cutinella on the high school's field on Oct. 2, 2014, in Shoreham, N.Y. Cutinella died the day before at the age of 16 from a collision in a game against John Glenn High School.
photo Mark Wiedmer
Early this afternoon, Amy Huesman will serve Easter dinner to her family and at least nine University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football players coached by her husband.

"It's all her," Russ Huesman, UTC's head coach since 2009, said with a chuckle Friday morning. "I don't do anything. I just help eat it, and it's all really good."

Anyone wishing to list all that's good about football at any level could do far worse than start with the Huesmans, who could easily be considered the First Family of Mocs football. Not only did Russ play for UTC long before he became the school's coach, his son Jacob may go down as the most decorated player in school history for quarterbacking the Mocs to two playoff berths and three Southern Conference titles during his four seasons.

Beyond that - and perhaps more important than that - Russ Huesman's teams have hugely excelled in the classroom and in the community where they've become fixtures at Special Olympics and other charitable endeavors.

So when the UTC coach says, "I would recommend that any kid who wants to play football play it, it's the greatest sport in the world," his words should carry extra weight and perspective.

But there is another side to football these days that is anything but good. It's troubling, bordering on terrifying, and down the road it could end participation in the sport from all but the most financially desperate looking for a way out of poverty.

As the national discussion over the long-term damage from concussions grows, there seems to be a stubborn, stupid segment of society that wants to maintain football's most violent collisions at the expense of health and safety, as if any game devoid of a brain-rattling hit to the head area isn't worth watching.

Anyone with that mindset should spend today with the Cutinella family of Wading River, N.Y. Today will be their second Easter without Frank and Kelli's son Tom, who died not long after taking an illegal hit to the helmet during a game between him and his Shoreham-Wading River High School teammates and John Glenn High School in Elwood, N.Y., on Oct 1, 2014.

A junior at the time, Tom would have been wrapping up his senior year of high school today, quite likely headed to West Point. Instead, his family soldiers on without him after keeping him alive just long enough to fulfill his wishes to donate his heart, pancreas, kidneys, liver, skin, bone, tissue and corneas.

As Frank told ESPN.com's Ian O'Connor in one of the most touching, inspiring, disturbing articles one could ever read: "(Tom) was a giver. It's fitting with Tom, there's nothing left. He gave everything in life, and again when he died."

According to the article, as Tom was blocking on a running play, he was speared in the side of his helmet by a defensive player. At the time, Frank thought, "That's a cheap shot." But he didn't think anything of Tom falling to the turf until Tom's younger brother Kevin, a sophomore, motioned for their father to come to the field.

"He essentially died at my feet," Frank said in the article.

After being unable to make himself watch the video for 10 months after Tom died, Frank finally sat down to relive what happened. It was bad enough that all five officials working the game failed to throw a flag for the illegal hit, he thought. But what really bothered Cutinella - and what should bother us all - was the reaction from some opposing fans and John Glenn players.

"What made me say that the culture of football is wrong, having watched my son's death live and first hand, was watching it on video," he told O'Connor.

"The (John Glenn) player fist-pumps like he had just done something good. I could hear some of their fans cheering. I could hear some men in the press box saying, 'Did you see that hit?' Or, 'Wow, what a hit.' I was told their sideline erupted in joy. This is what it's become, because this is what they've been programmed to see and think is part of the game. It's not part of the game, and it was never intended to be part of the game."

This is what has become part of the game: The University of National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research reported there were 13 high school fatalities in 2014 and 2013 directly related to football, with another 16 indirectly related. Another 13 high school players died during or after practices and games in 2015, including six directly related to football injuries.

And all of this piggybacks the NFL's recent admission that there is an unmistakable link between football and the degenerative brain disease CTE.

So Cutinella has fought back, hoping his son's death can keep someone else from dying. He's calling for referees to read a pregame safety statement to all players and for all staffs to include a "safety coach" to monitor technique in games and practices. He'd like for flagrant and unsportsmanlike fouls to carry stiffer penalties and ejections and suspensions. He also wants referees to rate coaches on safety issues and wants officials given more freedom to remove verbally abusive fans.

"In order to change the culture," Cutinella said in the article, "you need to make drastic rule changes and have drastic enforcement of those rules."

Huesman began playing for the Mocs at the close of the 1970s, before there was much, if any, concern about head injuries.

"I probably had 12 concussions I never knew I had," he said. "I'd see stars, maybe a little dizzy. Then I'd wake up the next morning with a headache. I guess I'm lucky. I still feel OK today."

Yet having watched Jacob take more than his share of punishment and with younger son Levi rising up the prep ranks, the UTC coach also welcomes the changes in concussion protocol.

"We're constantly teaching techniques to keep players from using their heads," he said as he prepared for the start of the Mocs' spring practices on Monday. "And if the trainers or doctors determine there is a concussion, it's out of our hands now. There's no discussion. The player sits. The game is much, much safer today."

He's right, of course. But as Tom Cutinella's senseless death reminds us, it's not yet safe enough, and it won't be until the kind of head hits that took his promising young life are no longer part of the culture of the game at any and all levels.

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.

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